What the False Fronts of Victorians Say About San Francisco

When I was in my twenties, I spent several drunken, chaotic days wandering the Mission on a trip that would change the trajectory of my life. My friends lived in a sprawling multiroomed home on Alabama, and near it was a house with a tall facade. At some point during the cheerful trip, we clambered up onto their roof to look out at the other houses.

While I gorged myself on tacos from a place on 24th, I asked my friends why the building facades were so tall when it was obvious the rest of the houses, their rear ends and guts, were simple and shrunken. I don’t recall if they told me or I found out later in my decade-long obsession with the architectural history of San Francisco; it’s lost somewhere to the fog of my memories.

Now, though, I know. The facades tell us a story in and of themselves, a story of the Wild West and the Gold Rush and all the messy ways our city tried to establish itself through costumes and fuckery as something far more sophisticated than what it is: a place so skilled at deceptions it even tricks itself.

The facades you’ll see on these Victorians make the houses seem taller. While they, in my humble opinion, are often handsome, it’s hard to disassociate them from other cosmetic tricks. Sometimes when I see a house with such a fine front, I imagine a cobra with its massive and intimidating neck, or Donald Trump in his ridiculous shoe lifts that give him an extra three-and-a-half inches of height. It’s a particularly nasty fantasy in the wrong hands. While the cobra does it for defense and hunting, Trump does it to make himself feel Big and Strong.

So which are our fine houses? In the beginning, the Wild West often adopted these taller facades to make their buildings seem more finished. Places like San Francisco sprung up overnight, and the false fronts made them look polished at a time when The City was eager to quash rumors of ill repute. Look at how sophisticated we are! We certainly don’t have disease-prone conditions, more men than women, or robberies in the night. Come here. Invest your money.

Is that defense? Something more sinister? Or is it simply show biz? These homes and shops are old by now. Nobody builds new things in that style. Not here, at least. So I like to think of the false fronts as a quaint reminder that we were built on putting on a show.

It’s a longer conversation than I have the bandwidth for, but I have friends who often tell me how fake San Francisco is. How it’s a whole “city of sensitive frauds,” to quote the title of a BAS contributor's 2025 documentary. Maybe the architecture lends to his argument. After all, we have elected a mayor who views his primary role as that of a Public Relations ringmaster, putting on the song and dance about the City being “so back.”

Or this architectural future might just be a quirky little thing you notice as you walk along our charming streets, something you don’t think twice about.